Spanish Ibex blend in almost perfectly against the rocky backdrop!
Spain is a beautiful country with many wild treasures that I still find surprising after several years living in and exploring its natural landscapes and hidden corners. One of its real gems is the Parque Natural Sierra de Cazorla, Segura y Las Villas. It may be Spain’s biggest protected area, covering 2143km² and the source of Andalucía’s greatest river, the Guadalquivir, but its remote location, tucked in the North East of province, far from the sea, keeps it off the map even to many Spaniards.
After an initial drive through some craggy and spectacular mountains on the highway heading north from Granada, the landscape opens out into a rolling, heavily cultivated landscape of olive groves. The groves might produce some of Spain’s best oil and provide numerous jobs, but the ascetic effect is monotonous and uninspiring. It’s not a promising aspect at all for prospective nature lovers, but then, around Jaen, the route turns east towards Cazorla town and a seemingly unending spine of mountains begins to dominate the landscape, like a wall, keeping agriculture and olive groves at bay.
Although the mountains aren’t that high, mostly below 2000m in altitude, they are wild and rugged. Reaching the historic and beautiful Cazorla town on the parks’ eastern fringes, the mountains become an all dominating presence; great craggy cliffs rising directly up behind the town, entirely consuming your vision, dragging your eyes upwards to where you see Griffon Vultures soaring on their huge wings nearly 3 metres across. The spectacular Moorish Castillo de la Yedra rising above the town adds its dominating presence to the view, seemingly complementing the drama above.
Cazorla town itself has a pleasingly laid-back, slightly washed up backwater kind of feel, despite its spectacular setting, history and obvious attempts to promote tourism. If you visited Cazorla town and not the park itself though, that really would be a crying shame and you wouldn’t really have any sense of the vast scale and beauty that awaits on the far side of the mountains.
For that you need to continue up the flanks of the steep western ramparts of the Cazorla Range, a climb with ever more spectacular views of the olive growing plain and steep lofty summits of Sierra de Baeza to the South. Reaching the top of the pass you’re given an even more lovely vista into the heart of the protected area, a lush pine forested green valley, running roughly north to south as far as the eye can see, buttressed and shielded on both sides by steep forested limestone peaks. It’s almost as if you’re looking back into a Spain of hundreds of years ago, back to a primal world, long before logging and large scale agriculture.
Beginning a long descent into the valley to the pretty town of Castril, set on the valley floor, unless you’re very unlucky you’ll begin to get another sense of why this place is so special. Deer wander everywhere, cantering along the roadside, seemingly unconcerned with human watchers. The forests are alive with birdsong and red squirrels sit and munch nuts on fences within the shake of a furry tail from the road.
As we headed north the parks’ huge size becomes more and more apparent with every turn revealing new mountains and views up side valleys, and the green forest stretches on and on. Sherwood Forest in England may now be nothing more than a small forested blip, but Cazorla has a scale that could truly give refuge to the Robin Hood of my childhood imagination!
On the left of the road I briefly caught a glimpse of one of the parks’ more famous and numerous residents, a wild boar, confidently trotting through a small meadow. Last time we’d been here, we were lucky enough to receive a visit from an entire family of boar – a female and her newly born piglets at our campsite. This truly is a wild and wonderful Spain!
Wild and wonderful it may be, but no part of the world, no wild place is immune to the damage our species is inflicting on the world and our ability to change our planets’ climate. Heading north we were approaching the Embalse de Tranco de Beas Reservoir – the biggest and most important body of water in the park, the lake source of the Guadalquivir River and far to the West, Seville, Andalucía’s Capital. It’s a huge body of water, around 20km long. At least it is usually. We emerged at a viewpoint on the road overlooking the ‘lake’, which had lived up to its name 2 years before when I visited, but now was dried out muddy plain of huge proportions being explored by hungry deer looking for some green shoots to nibble. A large island, several kilometres long sits at the south of the lake; but now this was just a hill connected to the land on all sides by the dried out basin of the reservoir. Still a beautiful spot but also a graphic reminder of the changing climate and the three year long drought that has been gripping Andalucía, even in its lushest and greenest corners. We did ‘find’ the reservoir further north, but the level of the water frighteningly low, considering that the river provides a big chunk of the supplies for a great swath of Andalucía, its people and nature.
At the Dam itself we turned down a small dirt path into a remote side valley and in the forest beneath some spectacular worn summits we arrived at our home for the night. At the Hospederia las Cañadillas we were welcomed by a friendly Spaniard of reassuringly ‘solid’ proportions and his mother, preparing a very much ‘handmade’ diner. The rooms were small but wonderfully snug, the location as secluded as you could wish for, and a blazing fire providing a perfect focus to the living room. Sit down, put your feet up and contemplate the world, while watching shapes flow and meld in the flames.
Not only that, but the house provided some lovely walking tracks into the deep valley behind the house that felt positively primordial. As the dark extinguished the light of day and the inky blue of evening took hold we wondered back to the Hospederia and I contemplated what a wild boar would make of us if we surprised one walking down the track – that didn’t happen, but it was a thought!
We only had a ‘weekend’ away in Cazorla so when we woke to a beautiful morning, the sun illuminating golden autumn colours in the woods around us, we munched breakfast quickly, packed our stuff and headed back South for a brisk stroll up the ‘Rio Barosa’, Cazorla’s most well-known hiking route. The valley’s lovely river full of crystal clear pools, tumbling cascades, rapids and magnificent twisted cliffs showing clearly how the forces of the earth have bent and twisted the rock like a child moulding clay. We didn’t have time to finish the full walk – so the pair of wild lakes at the head of the valley would have to remain elusive until next time.
It was with some regret that we had to turn back north to where we’d left the car, but every moment in that valley, green pyramid mountains all around, was a joy. The whole valley was alive with sights, smells and living things, the aromas of herbs and pine, huge colourful dragonflies flitting across the path and into the gurgling riverbed. We had lunch in a bar in Castrill, enjoying the sunny autumn afternoon and I swore I would return once more to sample Cazorla’s delights, to finish that Rio Barosa walk!